Would You Trust a (Faulty) Robot? : Effects of Error, Task Type and Personality on Human-Robot Cooperation and Trust

How do mistakes made by a robot affect its trustworthiness and acceptance in human-robot collaboration? We investigate how the perception of erroneous robot behavior may influence human interaction choices and the willingness to cooperate with the robot by following a number of its unusual requests. For this purpose, we conducted an experiment in which participants interacted with a home companion robot in one of two experimental conditions: (1) the correct mode or (2) the faulty mode. Our findings reveal that, while significantly affecting subjective perceptions of the robot and assessments of its reliability and trustworthiness, the robot's performance does not seem to substantially influence participants' decisions to (not) comply with its requests. However, our results further suggest that the nature of the task requested by the robot, e.g. whether its effects are revocable as opposed to irrevocable, has a signicant im- pact on participants' willingness to follow its instructions

Towards Safe and Trustworthy Social Robots : Ethical Challenges and Practical Issues

Maha Salem, Gabriella Lakatos, Farshid Amirabdollahian, K. Dautenhahn, ‘Towards Safe and Trustworthy Social Robots: Ethical Challenges and Practical Issues’, paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Social Robotics, Paris, France, 26-30 October, 2015.As robots are increasingly developed to assist humans so- cially with everyday tasks in home and healthcare settings, questions regarding the robot's safety and trustworthiness need to be addressed. The present work investigates the practical and ethical challenges in de- signing and evaluating social robots that aim to be perceived as safe and can win their human users' trust. With particular focus on collaborative scenarios in which humans are required to accept information provided by the robot and follow its suggestions, trust plays a crucial role and is strongly linked to persuasiveness. Accordingly, human-robot trust can directly aect people's willingness to cooperate with the robot, while under- or overreliance may have severe or even dangerous consequences. Problematically, investigating trust and human perceptions of safety in HRI experiments proves challenging in light of numerous ethical con- cerns and risks, which this paper aims to highlight and discuss based on experiences from HRI practice.Peer reviewe

Mucocele of the appendix: An unusual cause of lower abdominal pain in a patient with ulcerative colitis

The authors report the case of a 60-year-old male patient. In November 2001 he developed intestinal symptoms of bloody diarrhea and abdominal pain. Colononoscopy and biopsy established the diagnosis of ulcerative colitis (proctosigmoiditis). The disease activity was moderate at the beginning. No significant laboratory alterations were found (including CEA, CA19-9), and mesalazine was started orally. He was in remission until November 2003, when he was admitted to our Outpatient Clinic for upper and right lower abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea. Colonoscopy found proctosigmoiditis with a moderate activity, gastroscopy revealed chronic gastritis, laboratory data was normal. Treatment was amended with mesalazine clysma and methylprednisolone (16 mg) orally. Symptoms ameliorated; however, right lower abdominal pain persisted. US and CT examination demonstrated a pericecal cystic mass (11 cm x 3.5 cm). At first pericecal abscess was suspected, as the previous US examination (6 mo earlier) had revealed normal findings. Fine needle aspiration was performed. Cytology confirmed the diagnosis of mucocele. The patient underwent partial cecum resection and extirpation of the mucocele. He recovered well and the final histology revealed a cystadenoma of the appendix. Follow up was started. The patient is now free of symptoms. Although primary adenocarcinoma of the appendix is uncommon, the authors emphasize that preoperative diagnosis of an underlying malignancy in a mucocele is important for patient management; however, it is difficult on imaging studies

How does peoples’ perception of control depend on the criticality of a task performed by a robot Paladyn

© 2019 Adeline Chanseau et al., published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License.Robot companions are starting to become more common and people are becoming more familiar with devices such as Google Home, Alexa or Pepper,one must wonder what is the optimum way for people to control their devices? This paper provides presents an investigation into how much direct control people want to have of their robot companion and how dependent this is on the criticality of the tasks the robot performs. A live experiment was conducted in the University of Hertfordshire Robot House, with a robot companion performing four different type of tasks. The four tasks were: booking a doctor’s appointment, helping the user to build a Lego character, doing a dance with the user, and carrying biscuits for the user. The selection of these tasks was based on our previous research to define tasks which were relatively high and low in criticality. The main goal of the study was to find what level of direct control over their robot participants and if this was dependent on the criticality of the task performed by the robot. Fifty people took part in the study, and each experienced every task in a random order. Overall,it was found that participants’ perception of control was higher when the robot was performing a task in a semi-autonomous mode. However, for the task "carrying biscuits", although participants perceived to be more in control with the robot performing the task in a semi autonomous mode, they actually preferred to have the robot performing the task automatically (where they felt less in control). The results also show that, for the task "booking a doctor’s appointment", considered to be the most critical of all four tasks, participants did not prefer that the robot chose the date of the appointment as they felt infantilised.Peer reviewe

Mobilitás és foglalkoztatás

A Magyarországot érintő újkori nemzetközi migráció irodalma 1988–1990-től indult el, amikor is befogadó, majd röviddel ezt követően kibocsátó ország lettünk. A publikációk leíró jelleggel, irányokra, definíciókra és becslésekre alapoztak. Így a jogi, a földrajzi és a folyamatok szociológiai magyarázatát kereső cikkek, tanulmányok jelentek meg (Nagy 1992, 1994, Tóth 2005, Sík 2004, Hárs 2004, Rédei 2009, 2010). A statisztikai adatok megjelenésével vált lehetővé a nemzetközileg is összehasonlítható tárgyalási mód (Juhász 1994, Tóth 1999). 2001 óta állnak rendelkezésre megbízható és részletes területi adatok, amelyek már az érkezők személyes profilját is tartalmazzák (Kincses 2011). A hazai statisztika - hasonlóan más országok gyakorlatához - jelenleg is a beérkezők adatgyűjtésére helyezi a hangsúlyt. A publikációk növekvő mértékben elemzésekre törekedtek, mint például az új magyar állampolgárok összetétele, az érkezők területi elhelyezkedése, a cirkuláció kérdése, a foglalkoztatás, az adózás és a hazautalás (Kincses 2008, 2014a, b, Illés 2013, 2014, Tóth 2005, Hárs 2004, 2012, Rédei 2007, G. Lukács 2004, 2009). Egyes elemzések arra is törekedtek, hogy az érkezőket eredet és letelepedési helyük szerint összekapcsolják, és ezzel nemcsak az egyes eseményeket, hanem azok térbeli hálózatát is kövessék (Kincses 2012, Sík 1992, 2000). A kivándorlás az ezredfordulót követően, de különösen 2011 után felerősödött, és napjainkban eléri a közép-európai régió országaira jellemzőket. Mégis az, hogy 2010-et követően gyorsult, szerepe volt két globális körülménynek; 2008-tól a schengeni szabad áramlási tér része lettünk, ami nemcsak számunkra kifelé, de másoknak befelé is korlátlanabb áramlást tett lehetővé. A befelé törekvést kiemelten motiválta az a tény, hogy időközben kitört a globális válság, ami további mozgató erőt jelentett. Következményeként, a válság első éveiben ideáramló befektetések a hazai munkaerő itthon történő foglalkoztatását jelentették, majd az elmaradó külföldi beruházások és a hazai lehetőségek csökkenése erőteljes kiáramlást idézett elő (Rédei 2011, 2012). Jelen cikkünk azt a célt tűzte ki, hogy a 2001. és a 2011. évi népszámlálás adatállománya alapján áttekintést adjon az ingázás, a költözés és a nemzetközi migráció, egyes esetekben egymást követő jellemzőiről. A migrációs döntés a környezettel való elégedetlenségen alapul, ami napi mobilitáshoz, majd a lakóhely megváltoztatásához, s ezután egy másik országban történő lakhelykereséshez vezet. Ez a döntési láncolat egyre több szempontot vesz figyelembe, nő a földrajzi elszakadás, és a mobil személy részéről az új helyen történő alkalmazkodáshoz egyre többoldalú igyekezet szükséges. A cikk a mobilitás három formáját a népszámlálási adatok alapján hozza összefüggésbe a foglalkoztatással. A nemzetközi mobilitás a népszámlálást követő időszakban vált intenzívvé, e tekintetben cikkünk mondanivalója veszített aktualitásából. A belső mozgás, a költözés kisebb és nem trend jellegű változásokat mutat. A kutatás érdekes és folytatandó részének tartjuk azt, hogy a három eseményt mint a mobilitási döntés szakaszait elemezzük. A változtatási igény kezdetben napi, heti ingázásban jelenik meg, majd a határon belül, később a határon túlra történő átmeneti vagy végleges lakhatási változtatással folytatódik. Egy későbbiekben megfogalmazható kérdés, a visszatérés. A 2011. évi népszámlálás arra vonatkozóan tartalmaz adatokat, hogy mennyi volt a hazatérők és ideköltözők együttes szám

Does the Appearance of a Robot Influence People's Perception of Task Criticality?

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.As home robot companions become more common, it is important to understand what types of tasks are considered critical to perform correctly. This paper provides working definitions of task criticality, physical and cognitive tasks with respect to robot task performance. Our research also suggests that although people's perceptions of task criticality is independent of robot appearances, their expectation that a robot performs tasks correctly is affected by it's appearance

Communicative Robot Signals: Presenting a New Typology for Human-Robot Interaction

© 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/We present a new typology for classifying signals from robots when they communicate with humans. For inspiration, we use ethology, the study of animal behaviour and previous efforts from literature as guides in defining the typology. The typology is based on communicative signals that consist of five properties: the origin where the signal comes from, the deliberateness of the signal, the signal's reference, the genuineness of the signal, and its clarity (i.e. how implicit or explicit it is). Using the accompanying worksheet, the typology is straightforward to use to examine communicative signals from previous human-robot interactions and provides guidance for designers to use the typology when designing new robot behaviours

A Novel Reinforcement-Based Paradigm for Children to Teach the Humanoid Kaspar Robot

© The Author(s) 2019. This is the final published version of an article published in Psychological Research, licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-bution 4.0 International License. Available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12369-019-00607-xThis paper presents a contribution to the active field of robotics research with the aim of supporting the development of social and collaborative skills of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). We present a novel experiment where the classical roles are reversed: in this scenario the children are the teachers providing positive or negative reinforcement to the Kaspar robot in order for the robot to learn arbitrary associations between different toy names and the locations where they are positioned. The objective of this work is to develop games which help children with ASD develop collaborative skills and also provide them tangible example to understand that sometimes learning requires several repetitions. To facilitate this game we developed a reinforcement learning algorithm enabling Kaspar to verbally convey its level of uncertainty during the learning process, so as to better inform the children interacting with Kaspar the reasons behind the successes and failures made by the robot. Overall, 30 Typically Developing (TD) children aged between 7 and 8 (19 girls, 11 boys) and 6 children with ASD performed 22 sessions (16 for TD; 6 for ASD) of the experiment in groups, and managed to teach Kaspar all associations in 2 to 7 trials. During the course of study Kaspar only made rare unexpected associations (2 perseverative errors and 1 win-shift, within a total of 272 trials), primarily due to exploratory choices, and eventually reached minimal uncertainty. Thus the robot's behavior was clear and consistent for the children, who all expressed enthusiasm in the experiment.Peer reviewe